Mansfield, Charles Blachford

Despite the availability of methods for extracting aniline from coal tar, this source hardly provided an abundant supply of the aromatic amine. Some chemists worked on the development of the two-step synthesis from coal-tar benzene. They included Hofmann s assistant Charles Blachford Mansfield, who pioneered the separation by distillation of coal-tar hydrocarbons, undertook nitration of benzene, and reduction of the nitrobenzene, probably by the method of Zinin. Mansfield s experiments came to an abrupt end early in 1855 when, while preparing samples for the Paris International Exhibition, a still in his laboratory caught fire. He was badly burned and died in hospital a few days later. 

Charles Blachford Mansfield (Rowner, Hampshire, 1819-London, 26 February 1855), a technical chemist in London, died as a result of a fire during the distillation of coal-tar.A posthumous work contains some very odd new names, e.g. style for the radical of a hydracid (hydrostyle) and its salts, etc. 

A Theory of Salts A Treatise on the Constitution of Bipolar Two Membered) Chemical Compoundsy by the late Charles Blachford Mansfield, ed. with preface by N.S.M. (M. H. Nevil Story Maskelyne), 1865 (53, 608 pp., 2 fold, plates). 

---